Sleeping giants? Fired workbloggers and labour organisation

This paper argues that the Waterstone's fired blogger incident performed a labour organising function in terms of garnering pro‐labour media attention and encouraging critical discourse. Looking at the blog's distinctive features and evolution, it evaluates the strengths, limitations and potential for recurrence of similar high‐profile incidents.     

Causality reconsidered: A note

This note extends the recent work of Steinnes by formulating and testing a similar but more complete dynamic reduced form model of intraurban location decisions. The formulation of the model corrects a specification error by Steinnes, and a dummy variable technique is applied to yield consistent estimates. The results include relations between the employment sectors as well as between population and employment and, when they differ from those previously published, they are more plausible. The basic conclusion of the note is that “jobs follow people.”     

New technology and changing organisational forms: implications for managerial control and skills

Changes in organisational forms are central to the way new technologies impact on the future of work and employment. Drawing on case–study evidence of a call centre and its client relations and a multinational IT firm and its partnership with a government department, this paper explores the implications for skill and managerial control.     

Human Resource Management and the Permeable Organization: The Case of the Multi‐Client Call Centre*

ABSTRACT Despite the interest over recent years in the fragmentation of organizations and the development of contracting, little attention has been paid to the impact of the associated inter‐organizational relationships on the internal organization of employment. Inter‐organizational relations have been introduced primarily as a means of externalizing – and potentially rendering invisible – employment issues and employment relations. In a context where inter‐organizational relationships appear to be growing in volume and diversity, this constitutes a significant gap in the literature that this paper in part aims to fill. The purpose of the paper is two‐fold: to develop a framework for considering the internal and external organizational influences on employment and to apply this framework within a case study of a multi‐client outsourcing call centre. We explore the interactions between internal objectives, client demands and the use of external contracting in relation to three dimensions of employment policy: managing the wage‐effort bargain, managing flexibility and managing commitment and performance. It is the interplay between these factors in a dynamic context that provides, we suggest, the basis for a more general framework for considering human resource policy in permeable organizations.     

Employment relations in small commercial businesses in China

There has been a growing interest in the way patterns of employment relations are changing in China. However, there remains insufficient understanding in employment relations in small private businesses. This study of small businesses in China explores major issues in employment relations in these firms. The finding shows that there are major differences between large and small businesses in China in their employment practices and that considerable similarities exist between small firms in China and those in other countries.     

Changing Organizational Forms and the Employment Relationship

This paper draws upon new research in the UK into the relationship between changing organizational forms and the reshaping of work in order to consider the changing nature of the employment relationship. The development of more complex organizational forms – such as cross organization networking, partnerships, alliances, use of external agencies for core as well as peripheral activities, multi‐employer sites and the blurring of public/private sector divide – has implications for both the legal and the socially constituted nature of the employment relationship. The notion of a clearly defined employer–employee relationship becomes difficult to uphold under conditions where employees are working in project teams or on‐site beside employees from other organizations, where responsibilities for performance and for health and safety are not clearly defined, or involve more than one organization. This blurring of the relationship affects not only legal responsibilities, grievance and disciplinary issues and the extent of transparency and equity in employment conditions, but also the definition, constitution and implementation of the employment contract defined in psychological and social terms. Do employees perceive their responsibilities at work to lie with the direct employer or with the wider enterprise or network organization? And do these perceptions affect, for example, how work is managed and carried out and how far learning and incremental knowledge at work is integrated in the development of the production or service process? So far the investigation of both conflicts and complementarities in the workplace have focused primarily on the dynamic interactions between the single employer and that organization’s employees. The development of simultaneously more fragmented and more networked organizational forms raises new issues of how to understand potential conflicts and contradictions around the ‘employer’ dimension to the employment relationship in addition to more widely recognized conflicts located on the employer–employee axis.     

Modelling the effect of climate change on prevalence of malaria in western Africa

Malaria is a leading cause of infectious disease and death worldwide. As a common example of a vector‐borne disease, malaria could be greatly affected by the influence of climate change. Climate impacts the transmission of malaria in several ways, affecting all stages of the disease's development. Using various weather‐related factors that influence climate change, this study utilizes statistical analysis to determine the effect of climate change on reported malaria rates in an African region with endemic malaria. It examines the relationship between malaria prevalence and climate in western Africa using spatial regression modeling and tests for correlation. Our analysis suggests that minimal correlation exists between reported malaria rates and climate in western Africa. This analysis further contradicts the prevailing theory that climate and malaria prevalence are closely linked and negates the idea that climate change will increase malaria transmission in this region.     

Industrial Relations Systems and US Foreign Direct Investment Abroad

Five readily distinguishable industrial relations systems are identified based on differences in education levels, hourly compensation costs and various government and collective bargaining constraints placed on management's freedom to set the terms and conditions of employment. A model of foreign direct investment (FDI) that incorporates these key industrial relations variables is then specified and tested against US FDI across a sample of nine industries and 33 industrialized and developing countries. The industrial relations system variables significantly influence US FDI abroad. In particular, education is negatively related to FDI across low skill–low wage countries but is positively related to FDI across high skill–high wage countries. Higher hourly compensation costs (apparently capturing higher productivity) are associated with greater FDI. Whereas government restrictions on layoffs, union penetration and centralized negotiation structures are negatively related to US FDI, the ratification of ILO standards and works council policies are positively related to US FDI. Based on these findings, the FDI attractiveness of industrial relations systems are compared and policy implications discussed.